Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar on Monday stressed the importance of a functioning Parliament for a healthy democracy. He said public unrest could erupt if Parliament continues to be disrupted and becomes irrelevant.

He was speaking at the launch of “Parliament: Powers, Functions and Privileges; a Comparative Constitutional Perspective” by K S Chauhan.

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“People will take to agitations. People will find a way out and therefore if Parliament is non-functional, it will gradually get into irrelevance, and that will be a threat to democracy,” he said.

Dhankhar highlighted the need for lawmakers to address the nation’s aspirations by enacting policies, emphasizing that this can only occur through a fully functional Parliament.

He also noted that India’s economic growth is dependent on a functioning Parliament.

“We are the fifth-largest global economy, we will soon be the third-largest. But the challenge is there. An eightfold increase in per capita income has to be achieved for a developed nation status. And that can happen only when Parliament, its committees perform and outperform themselves,” he said.

The Rajya Sabha chairman also expressed pain over the fact that no member of Parliament has come forward to claim a wad of currency notes found in the Rajya Sabha chamber last month, saying it is a “collective challenge to our ethical standards”.

A wad of Rs 500 notes found from the seat allotted to Congress leader Abhishek Singhvi in the Rajya Sabha on December 6, during the winter session of Parliament, had rocked the Upper House, with the opposition and ruling alliance members trading charges and Singhvi demanding a probe into the “security lapse”.

“Just imagine my pain. Only a month back or so, we found on a particular seat in the Rajya Sabha, the Council of States, a wad of notes, Rs 500 in denomination. What has really pained me is that no one has come to claim it,” Dhankhar said.

“You can carry notes, maybe out of necessity, but then no one has claimed that is a collective challenge to our ethical standards,” he said.

Dhankhar pointed out that for a long time, there was no committee on ethics. It was only in the late 1990s that the Rajya Sabha for the first time came to have a committee on ethics, which is functional.

“As the chairman, Rajya Sabha, I can tell you ladies and gentlemen, anyone who is there in the Rajya Sabha as a member is a human resource to reckon with brilliant credentials, great exposure and experience, but when it comes to action, they are guided by someone else,” he lamented.

Dhankhar concluded by expressing confidence in the potential of lawmakers, saying, “I envy their enormous talent, their capacity, their contribution. They are very learned people and, therefore, I am sure this book will be an eye opener to those who urge us to take this nation forward.”